The first 23 Barter Babes to join were friends and former PH&N co-workers who wanted to support Simmons. They mostly traded items and services to help out with the launch party: a lot of food, a press release, coat racks, silent auction items, courier services and social media consulting. Barter Babe No. 24, Grace Poon, was the first person to sign up for the project with whom Simmons had no prior connection. In exchange for Simmons’s financial advice, Poon provided graphic designs for an investment presentation (which Simmons still uses today). She remembers being excited, but also nervous: it was the first trade she’d made with someone who didn’t feel obligated to give her unconditional support. She needn’t have worried.

Bartering allows individuals to trade items that they already have but are not using for items that they need while keeping their cash on hand for expenses that cannot be paid through bartering such as a mortgage, medical bills and utilities. Bartering can also have a psychological benefit because it can create a deeper personal relationship between trading partners than a typical monetized transaction. Bartering can also help people build professional networks and market their businesses.
Although, as a general case, a ship unlucky in falling in with whales continues to cruise after them until she has barely sufficient provisions remaining to take her home, turning round then quietly and making the best of her way to her friends, yet there are instances when even this natural obstacle to the further prosecution of the voyage is overcome by headstrong captains, who, bartering the fruits of their hard-earned toils for a new supply of provisions in some of the ports of Chili or Peru, begin the voyage afresh with unabated zeal and perseverance.
Bartering allows individuals to trade items that they already have but are not using for items that they need while keeping their cash on hand for expenses that cannot be paid through bartering such as a mortgage, medical bills and utilities. Bartering can also have a psychological benefit because it can create a deeper personal relationship between trading partners than a typical monetized transaction. Bartering can also help people build professional networks and market their businesses.
Modern barter and trade has evolved considerably to become an effective method of increasing sales, conserving cash, moving inventory, and making use of excess production capacity for businesses around the world. Businesses in a barter earn trade credits (instead of cash) that are deposited into their account. They then have the ability to purchase goods and services from other members utilizing their trade credits – they are not obligated to purchase from who they sold to, and vice-versa. The exchange plays an important role because they provide the record-keeping, brokering expertise and monthly statements to each member. Commercial exchanges make money by charging a commission on each transaction either all on the buy side, all on the sell side, or a combination of both. Transaction fees typically run between 8 and 15%.
Another advantage of bartering is that you do not have to part with material items. Instead, you can offer a service in exchange for an item. For instance, if your friend has a skateboard that you want and their bicycle needs work, if you are good at fixing things, you can offer to fix their bike in exchange for the skateboard. With bartering two parties can get something they want or need from each other without having to spend any money.
In late 2012, Toronto even got its own spinoff of Trade School, a model that originated in New York in 2010. The Toronto Trade School holds classes—on anything from spoken word to origami flower–making to bicycle maintenance—and invites students to “pay” with an item or service from the teacher’s barter wish list. It has hosted more than 70 classes.
1.Jump up ^ O'Sullivan, Arthur; Steven M. Sheffrin (2003). Economics: Principles in Action. Pearson Prentice Hall. p. 243. ISBN 0-13-063085-3. 2.^ Jump up to: a b Graeber, David (2011). Debt: the first 5,000 years. New York: Melville House. pp. 21–41. 3.Jump up ^ Humphrey, Caroline (1985). "Barter and Economic Disintegration". Man 20 (1): 49. 4.^ Jump up to: a b Humphrey, Caroline (1985). "Barter and Economic Disintegration". Man 20 (1): 48. 5.Jump up ^ Humphrey, Carolyn and Stephen Hugh-Jones (ed.). Barter, Exchange and Value: An Anthropological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 3. 6.Jump up ^ Graeber, David (2001). Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of our Dreams. New York: Palgrave. p. 154. 7.Jump up ^ Graeber, David (2011). Debt: the first 5,000 years. New York: Melville House. pp. 40–41. 8.Jump up ^ Graeber, David (2001). Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The false coin of our own dreams. New York: Palgrave. pp. 153–4. 9.Jump up ^ Graeber, David (2011). Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House. pp. 94–102. 10.Jump up ^ Robert E. Wright and Vincenzo Quadrini. Money and Banking.Chapter 3, Section 1: Of Love, Money, and Transactional Efficiency Accessed June 29, 2012 11.Jump up ^ Humphrey, Caroline (1985). "Barter and Economic Disintegration". Man 20 (1): 66–7. 12.Jump up ^ Plattner, Stuart (1989). Plattner, Stuart, ed. Economic Anthropology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. p. 179. 13.Jump up ^ M. Bloch, J. Parry (1989). Money and the Morality of Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 10. 14.Jump up ^ Humphrey, Caroline (1985). "Barter and Economic Disintegration". Man 20 (1): 52. 15.Jump up ^ Polanyi, Karl (1957). Polanyi, Karl et al, ed. Trade and Market in Early Empires. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press. p. 14. 16.Jump up ^ Harrison, John (1969). Quest for the New Moral World: Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America. New York: Charles Scibners Sons. p. 72. 17.Jump up ^ Harrison, John (1969). Quest for the New Moral World: Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America. New York: Charles Scibners Sons. p. 73. 18.Jump up ^ Harrison, John (1969). Quest for the New Moral World: Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America. New York: Charles Scibners Sons. pp. 202–4. 19.Jump up ^ Tadayuki Tsushima, Understanding “Labor Certificates” on the Basis of the Theory of Value, 1956 20.Jump up ^ Homenatge A Catalunya II (Motion Picture). Spain, Catalonia: IN3, Universita Oberta de Catalunya, Creative Commons Licence. 2010. Retrieved January–2011. "A documentary, a research, a story of stories about the construction of a sustainable, solidarity economics and decentralized weaving nets that overcome the individualization and the hierarchical division of the work, 2011." 21.Jump up ^ Barcelona's barter markets (from faircompanies.com. Accessed 2009-06-29.) 22.Jump up ^ "What is LETS?". AshevilleLETS. Retrieved December 9, 2008. 23.Jump up ^ TIMES, nov. 2009 24.Jump up ^ David M. Gross, ed. (2008). We Won’t Pay: A Tax Resistance Reader. pp. 437–440. 25.Jump up ^ Tax Topics - Topic 420 Bartering Income. United States Internal Revenue Service
When barter has appeared, it wasn’t as part of a purely barter economy, and money didn’t emerge from it—rather, it emerged from money. After Rome fell, for instance, Europeans used barter as a substitute for the Roman currency people had gotten used to. “In most of the cases we know about, [barter] takes place between people who are familiar with the use of money, but for one reason or another, don’t have a lot of it around,” explains David Graeber, an anthropology professor at the London School of Economics.
This sort of scenario was so undesirable that societies must have created money to facilitate trade, argues Smith. Aristotle had similar ideas, and they’re by now a fixture in just about every introductory economics textbook. “In simple, early economies, people engaged in barter,” reads one. (“The American Indian with a pony to dispose of had to wait until he met another Indian who wanted a pony and at the same time was able and willing to give for it a blanket or other commodity that he himself desired,” read an earlier one.)
As a member of Barter Network, your business can access a large market of member companies that choose to do business with you, first - before considering your competitors. And through Barter Network, you'll find a full range of marketing opportunities and advertising media to increase your business profile and effectively build your brand - without paying cash. No wonder our membership is growing every day!

Michael Linton originated the term "local exchange trading system" (LETS) in 1983 and for a time ran the Comox Valley LETSystems in Courtenay, British Columbia.[22] LETS networks use interest-free local credit so direct swaps do not need to be made. For instance, a member may earn credit by doing childcare for one person and spend it later on carpentry with another person in the same network. In LETS, unlike other local currencies, no scrip is issued, but rather transactions are recorded in a central location open to all members. As credit is issued by the network members, for the benefit of the members themselves, LETS are considered mutual credit systems.

Bartering is the process of obtaining goods or services by direct exchange without the use of currency. In times of economic instability or currency devaluation, it can be a great way to ensure the flow of necessary items and services into your household without using precious funds. Historically, face-to-face exchanges between familiar parties were most common, but the Internet has opened up a new medium for bartering opportunities for both person-to-person exchanges and third-party facilitated transactions.

Nowinska says one of the biggest challenges Swapsity faces is that new barterers think they have nothing to offer. So they offer bad trades. Yet most people have hundreds of skills—from cooking to networking to scrapbooking. The trick is learning to recognize the value of your skills, your knowledge and your talent. Bartering attaches value to things that are not always recognized, or highly valued, in a cash economy—often hobbies that people can’t make a living on but love to do. One Barter Babe trades her homemade canned goods for gifts—mostly other crafted items—she can give away at Christmas. A Swapsity member has traded pounds of fiddleheads she picks at her mom’s house in the country for feng shui sessions.
For one thing, the barter myth “makes it possible to imagine a world that is nothing more than a series of cold-blooded calculations,” writes Graeber in Debt. This view is quite common now, even when behavioral economists have made a convincing case that humans are much more complicated—and less rational—than classical economic models would suggest.
Debts in the wir currency, assigned the same value as the Swiss franc, could be paid with sales to any member of the bartering circle: if a baker needed to “purchase” eggs and flour from a farmer, the baker could pay off the debt by “selling” baked goods to another wir member. The farmer, in turn, could use his newly acquired credit to “buy” his own needed items or services. Despite a bank-led campaign to discredit the system, wir stuck. Today, it has more than 60,000 business participants and does the equivalent of about $4.4 billion in annual trade.
In his analysis of barter between coastal and inland villages in the Trobriand Islands, Keith Hart highlighted the difference between highly ceremonial gift exchange between community leaders, and the barter that occurs between individual households. The haggling that takes place between strangers is possible because of the larger temporary political order established by the gift exchanges of leaders. From this he concludes that barter is "an atomized interaction predicated upon the presence of society" (i.e. that social order established by gift exchange), and not typical between complete strangers.[14]
Michael Linton originated the term "local exchange trading system" (LETS) in 1983 and for a time ran the Comox Valley LETSystems in Courtenay, British Columbia.[26] LETS networks use interest-free local credit so direct swaps do not need to be made. For instance, a member may earn credit by doing childcare for one person and spend it later on carpentry with another person in the same network. In LETS, unlike other local currencies, no scrip is issued, but rather transactions are recorded in a central location open to all members. As credit is issued by the network members, for the benefit of the members themselves, LETS are considered mutual credit systems.
Throughout the 18th century, retailers began to abandon the prevailing system of bartering. Retailers operating out of the Palais complex in Paris, France were among the first in Europe to abandon the bartering, and adopt fixed-prices thereby sparing their clientele the hassle of bartering. The Palais retailers stocked luxury goods that appealed to the wealthy elite and upper middle classes. Stores were fitted with long glass exterior windows which allowed the emerging middle-classes to window shop and indulge in fantasies, even when they may not have been able to afford the high retail prices. Thus, the Palais-Royal became one of the first examples of a new style of shopping arcade, which adopted the trappings of a sophisticated, modern shopping complex and also changed pricing structures, for both the aristocracy and the middle classes.[18]
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When barter has appeared, it wasn’t as part of a purely barter economy, and money didn’t emerge from it—rather, it emerged from money. After Rome fell, for instance, Europeans used barter as a substitute for the Roman currency people had gotten used to. “In most of the cases we know about, [barter] takes place between people who are familiar with the use of money, but for one reason or another, don’t have a lot of it around,” explains David Graeber, an anthropology professor at the London School of Economics.

Barter-based economies are one of the earliest, predating monetary systems and even recorded history. People can successfully use barter in many almost any field. Informally, people often participate in barter and other reciprocal systems without really ever thinking about it as such -- for example, providing web design or tech support for a farmer or baker and receiving vegetables or baked goods in return. Strictly Internet-based exchanges are common as well, for example exchanging content creation for research.
While it may be free, there is no one monitoring the barter ads, so you must be aware of potential Craigslist scams, and realize that you are always at risk when it comes to meetups and exchanges. For example, about a year ago, I arranged to trade massage gift certificates for housecleaning. Since the individual was coming to my home, I was more nervous than usual. However, she offered good previous references, and we arranged for a time to meet when my husband would be home, in case an odd, unexpected, or even dangerous situation arose.
U-Exchange Message Board | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Home Swapper UK | Home Exchange | Barter Items | Business Barter Goods Services | Site Map | How to Barter | Truck Trade | Swap Shop | Barter Online | Trade Services and Goods | Council House Exchange | Boat Trades | Trade Motorcycle | House Swap | House Exchange | Barter Items and Services USA | Home Exchange USA | Auto Trader USA | Bartering Vacation USA | Online House Trading | Auto Trader Canada | North American Trades | United Kingdom Swaps | You Exchange | Trade Vehicles Boats | Barter Services | Bartering | Barter Swap UK | Forgot Password | Index | Alternative Currency | On the positive side, there are great advantages to bartering. As mentioned earlier, you do not need money to barter. Another advantage is that there is flexibility in bartering. For instance, related products can be traded such as portable tablets in exchange for laptops. Or, items that are completely different can be traded such as lawn mowers for televisions. Homes can now be exchanged when people are traveling, which can save both parties money. For instance, if your parents have friends in another state and they need somewhere to stay while on a family vacation, their friends may trade their home for a week or so in exchange for your parents allowing them to use your home.

In the United States, Karl Hess used bartering to make it harder for the IRS to seize his wages and as a form of tax resistance. Hess explained how he turned to barter in an op-ed for The New York Times in 1975.[24] However the IRS now requires barter exchanges to be reported as per the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. Barter exchanges are considered taxable revenue by the IRS and must be reported on a 1099-B form. According to the IRS, "The fair market value of goods and services exchanged must be included in the income of both parties."[25]

The eXmerce barter system is set up different than traditional barter. Instead of trading products or services directly with another business, you earn Trade Dollars when a member buys from you. You can then use those Trade Dollars to purchase hundreds of products or services. Whether it’s personal or for your business, there is so much to choose from within the eXmerce community.
In England, about 30 to 40 cooperative societies sent their surplus goods to an "exchange bazaar" for direct barter in London, which later adopted a similar labour note. The British Association for Promoting Cooperative Knowledge established an "equitable labour exchange" in 1830. This was expanded as the National Equitable Labour Exchange in 1832 on Grays Inn Road in London.[21] These efforts became the basis of the British cooperative movement of the 1840s. In 1848, the socialist and first self-designated anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon postulated a system of time chits. In 1875, Karl Marx wrote of "Labor Certificates" (Arbeitszertifikaten) in his Critique of the Gotha Program of a "certificate from society that [the labourer] has furnished such and such an amount of labour", which can be used to draw "from the social stock of means of consumption as much as costs the same amount of labour."[22]

Other anthropologists have questioned whether barter is typically between "total" strangers, a form of barter known as "silent trade". Silent trade, also called silent barter, dumb barter ("dumb" here used in its old meaning of "mute"), or depot trade, is a method by which traders who cannot speak each other's language can trade without talking. However, Benjamin Orlove has shown that while barter occurs through "silent trade" (between strangers), it also occurs in commercial markets as well. "Because barter is a difficult way of conducting trade, it will occur only where there are strong institutional constraints on the use of money or where the barter symbolically denotes a special social relationship and is used in well-defined conditions. To sum up, multipurpose money in markets is like lubrication for machines - necessary for the most efficient function, but not necessary for the existence of the market itself."[12]

During economic downturns, when there is a keenly felt shortage of jobs and cash, people have historically adopted barter systems. The world’s most established bartering-style system is Switzerland’s wir: the German word for “we” as well as the abbreviation of Wirtschaftsring, which translates loosely to “economic circle.” In 1934, the economy in Switzerland had tanked—as it had in much of the world. Two businessmen who were facing bankruptcy, Paul Enz and Werner Zimmermann, gathered 15 of their associates in Zurich and hashed out a solution: a mutual credit system.